48 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XL 



women. In man the brain is destitute of blood and veins, and 

 in other animals it has no fat. Those who are well informed 

 on the subject, tell us that the brain is quite a different 

 substance from the marrow, seeing that on being boiled it 

 only becomes harder. In the very middle of the brain of 

 every animal there are small bones found. Man is the only ani- 

 mal in which it is known to palpitate 85 during infancy ; and 

 it does not gain its proper consistency until after the child has 

 made its first attempt to speak. The brain is the most ele- 

 vated of all the viscera, and the nearest to the roof of the 

 head ; it is equally devoid of flesh, blood, and excretions. The 

 senses hold this organ as their citadel; it is in this that 

 are centred all the veins which spring from the heart ; it is 

 here that they terminate ; this is the very culminating point of 

 all, the regulator of the understanding. With all animals it 

 is advanced to the fore-part of the head, from the fact that 

 the senses have a tendency to the direction in which we look. 

 From the brain proceeds sleep, and its return it is that causes 

 the head to nod. Those creatures, in fact, which have no brain, 

 never sleep. It is said that stags 86 have in the head certain 

 small maggots, twenty in number : they are situate in the 

 empty space that lies beneath the tongue, and around the joints 

 by which the head is united to the body. 



CHAP. 50. — THE EARS. ANIMALS WHICH HEAR WITHOUT EARS 



OR APERIURES. 



Man is the only animal the ears of which are immoveable. 

 It is from the natural flaccidity of the ear, that the surname 

 of Flaccus is derived. There is no part of the body that 

 creates a more enormous expense for our women, in the 

 pearls which are suspended from them. In the East, too, it 

 is thought highly becoming for the men, even, to wear gold 

 rings in their ears. Some animals have large, and others 

 small ears. The stag alone has them cut and divided, as it 

 were ; in the field-mouse they have a velvet surface. All the 

 animals that are viviparous have ears of some kind or other, 

 with the sole exception of the sea-calf, the dolphin, the fishes 



85 See B. vii. c. 1. 



66 Cuvier says that those are the larvae of the oestrus, which are deposited 

 on the lips of quadrupeds, and so make their way to various cavities. 



